BERLIN (dpa-AFX) – Slightly more cars were registered in Germany in 2022 than a year earlier – mainly due to significant increases since September. 2.65 million new cars hit the road last year. This is an increase of 1.1 percent compared to 2021, as the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) announced on Wednesday. While the auto industry still faced 11 percent fewer new registrations in the first half of the year, December’s registration figures were up 38.1 percent, according to the KBA. 314,318 cars were newly registered in the last month of the year.
Among other things, the reduction in purchase premiums for electric vehicles from 2023 is likely to have had an influence on this. Plug-in hybrids, which use an internal combustion engine in addition to an electric motor, have no longer been subsidized since the beginning of the year. For battery and fuel cell cars, the subsidy premiums have fallen.
According to the KBA, more than 104,000 pure electric cars were newly registered in December 2022 – more than twice as many as in the same month of the previous year. In addition, there are nearly 70,000 plug-in hybrids. Together, the two groups represent more than half of the new cars registered in December. For 2023, associations and experts expect plug-in hybrids in particular to sell worse.
The rise in registrations in the fourth quarter is also likely to be linked to the fact that carmakers are once again finding it easier to get hold of important parts such as chips – and cars that had already been on order for some time were hitting the road. “Delivery capability remains a challenge, but has improved significantly. Manufacturers can gradually work off the currently high order backlogs,” said Reinhard Zirpel, president of the Association of International Motor Vehicle Manufacturers./nif/DP/ngu
